Supporting South Africa and Vancouver with food wall gardens

Two of the bigger challenges for families and girls living in rural areas of South Africa’s Limpopo, Northern and Eastern Cape provinces, are food security and basic menstrual supplies.

Food Security

Food security is a challenge the world over in both developing and developed countries. The challenge is not that we cannot provide food. “We” can provide instant gratification, but this is a short term and band-aid solution. The challenge is being able to provide sustainable food sources. The solution is to transfer skills and to develop sustainable locally based food sources. This is the intent and underlying objective of the My Arms Wide Open, My World My Garden Cause through the establishment and management of My World In A Garden® vertical food walls.

Our goal is to construct 15 Vertical Food Wall Systems in communities by the end of 2015 with a number of them ‘sistered’ in cities and towns in the US, Canada and South Africa.

In the initial project My Arms Wide Open is proposing to build two identical live walls as food walls that will use both vegetable and fruit plants in place of the regular plants used in the original design. One will be located in the Town of Cradock, Eastern Cape, South Africa.

The other, a mirror of the Cradock live food wall will be located in the Downtown Eastside, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada at the Ray-Cam Community Centre. The Vancouver living vertical garden, like its sister wall in South Africa, will bring focus to community, food security and family.

During the spring and summer growing seasons, the garden will generate multiple harvests as well as a limited number of harvests in the autumn and winter seasons. The fresh vegetables harvested will support both Ray-Cam’s ongoing food program and in South Africa they food will support a children’s HIV/Aids hospice and a local daycare centre. A portion of each harvest during the growing season will be bottled or frozen to augment fall and winter food requirements.